Pat's only getting younger.

Right after starting class @ OIT on Friday, I rode over to Lara & Pat's place to meet the rest of the Rodriguez bunch & help celebrate Pat's birthday with some friends. It was the first time Angela got to see Cyrus & the first time Greg & Ethan got to see him awake, hehe. It was so great to see everyone again that we hadn't seen in a little while. We all enjoyed some of the delicious flavor of different types of Saki from the world market & rocked out to a greatly random collection of sweet rock & metal songs, provided to us by YouTube and Pat's collection of digital music. Padilac also got himself some sweet new ink! I'll get some pics posted of that soon enough.

Have you seen these great vids:
A orchastrated cello cover of The Final Countdown

& Mike Patton ( of Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, Peeping Tom & the Dillinja Escape Plan fame) singing opera with the Metropole Orchestra

Tah Tah for now,

-The Rodriguez Bunch-

Photos Galore

Along with all of these sweet posts that the Rodriguez Bunch sends your way, please remember that there are always more photos to check out on our

Online Photo Gallery.

I always add more photos to the albums when I make posts on here. So take a look into all the different photo albums on there. Also just like the posts on this site, you can get RSS feeds of when I upload photos to our photo albums.

Here's the link to do that:
http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/joserodriguez3?alt=rss&kind=album&hl=en_US&access=public

Tah Tah for now,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

More & More Cross!

...
* Once again let me say that Cyclocross is in FULL effect!!!

Man this cross thing is addicting. Every weekend we get together and race around on our bikes in some mud. We push ourselves till we're ready to explode and we're loving every moment of it. It's hard to explain because everything about sounds so wrong. We love rainy, muddy days, we race as hard as we can for 45 minutes straight, we have to lug our bikes around on our shoulders to run up hills & stairs and over barriers & rocks, and there's a million and one things that could possibly go wrong with every race we do. But its an AMAZING amount of fun. I could only hope that everyone reading this gets the chance and takes the opportunity to get out to a Cross race of any kind.
I've raced in 3 cross races since the last post.

+++

the Rickreall Rampage down past Salem


the Battle at Barlow out in Gresham



Those two races, along with Pain on the Peak, were all considered pre-season races.
+++
The Cross Crusade series started this past Sunday at the Alpenrose Diary

I've been having a lot of fun this cross season. Last year I was riding on a pieced together shin-dig that held it's ground for me during the end of the Cross Crusade Series. This year, though, I've been spoiled with my Cross & Commuter bike that has been treating me very well: the San Jose. Yeah yeah I know: Jose rides a San Jose. I've been staying at least mid-pack of the SingleSpeed category during these fast races through...

the mud (when we're lucky enough to get rain)

& dirt (when it's dry out),



up some insanely huge rail road tie barriers,

photo from pdxcross.com

down some sloppy off-chamber hills,
(this is a sequence shot. That hot pink leg in the bottom right of the first photo is me going down into the mud & the second photo is me trying to recover quickly)



through the woods,

photo from pdxcross.com

and pretty much everything else you could think of.

photo by John Dorfer

Check out all of the pictures & let me know which races you'll be at!!!

Here's the slideshow:

-The Rodriguez Bunch-

Oh the Fun we're having!

Busy we have been & here's the update.

*Cyrus just refuses to stop growing so much. This little man has grown 2" in his first month & a half of life and is already over half the weight of Arianna. That's right folks, Cyrus weighs in a at lean & hefty 11lbs. 9oz. as of today! Little man is feeding well, growing like a sprout & doing great.

*Arianna is doing wonderful as well. She's been loving to color lately and has enjoyed coloring the wood floors many different colors of the Crayola crayon set.

Here's some video of Arianna having fun & cleaning up & indoor park:

*Sue's most definitely had her hands full with keeping up with Arianna and taking such great care of our big ol' boy Cyrus. She'll also be heading back to work next week and so that'll be another item thrown into the mix.

*I've started classes, well a class, at the Oregon Institute of Technology. I'm going back to school to get my Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering. I'm starting this term off with only one class to get me started. Which is nice since we've got a lot going on.

*Works work.

*While I was at a cyclocross race, the rest of the Rodriguez Bunch headed down to Oaks Bottom park to have fun with the Lux & Whalstrom families. D. Lux was in town having enjoying her vacation with kids & grand kids.

*And Cyclocross is in FULL effect!!! This topic is gonna require it's own post.

So with that being said...

-The Rodriguez Bunch-

3 Week Makeup-3 of 3

Okay Okay and to tack on just one more post since I've been slacking...
This one will just kind of recap all of the things that we've been doing over the past 3 weeks.

• Cyrus - We've taken this little guy into see the doctors & midwives for all of his regular visits. One of the most amazing things to me is his weight. Last week he weighed in at 9lbs 9oz. That's right, Cyrus has gained over 3 lbs within the first 3 weeks of his life. I'm thinking that he's gonna be a giant and that he'll surpass Arianna in size within a few months to a year. Photo Page.
  
• Arianna - Arianna is having a blast keeping us busy. She's been really into figuring out our buttons and how to push them. She too is growing like a sprout. I love coming home from work and being able to sit down with her and have her happily tell me all of the wonderful things she did that day with Mommy. She's not speaking in completely worded sentences but when she's starts talking you can't really stop her. And I know what she's trying to say usually. It's awesome. Photo Page.
  
• Susan - WOW, what a wonderful woman. I'm am seriously the luckiest man alive. I have a gorgeous wife (that somehow still find it in her to love me), a wonderful family and a wonderful set of friends. Lately Susan has been getting excited to be able to get back into shape. She's been thinking a lot about climbing and so I think we're gonna get her signed up with the Portland Rock Gym so that she can get some climbing hours in. And have a blast of course ROCKING OUT!!
  
• Friends - You guys continue to amaze each & every day. Our friends have brought us food on multiple occasions since Cyrus has been born, come over to help out with watching the kids, helped out with random errands and have been a tremendous backbone of support for us as we have entered the world of multiple children.
• School - Yep, I'm going back to school. There have been a few glitches getting things set up but I'm up & running with it all. I start classes next week. I'll be going back to school at Oregon Institute of Technology, after a 6 year hiatus from schooling, to get a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. I'm a bit nervous but I'm going to take it slowly at first by just taking one or two classes a week. Hopefully I can balance out family time, work, school and all of these damn hobbies I got going on.
• Work - Some good things have been happening since I've gone back to work. I've gotten the heads up that I'll be running this new New York project. It's a pretty big job and I hope that I do well with it. The job is 516 5th Avenue.
  
• Cycling - Right now is pretty much the beginning of my cycling season. I don't really race much during the summer but as soon as the fall season and the rains come, I'm all about racing every weekend. I'm so excited about this season Cross Crusade series. I'm also putting some time in on a few other random cross races.
  
• Patrol - Patrol will be minimal this year. Which is a bummer deal since the mountain is my true calling. I'm very proud to be part of the Mt. Hood Ski Patrol, the oldest ski patrol organization in the U.S.. I'm planning to patrol a few times, get some vouchers, and then bring the family up on a few weekends so that Sue can get some riding in. Snow and the mountain will always been Sue & I's heartfelt passion. It's where we fell in love. Well actually it's where I fell in love with Susan. It took more time for Sue to then realize me, hehehe.

Thank you all for reading our blog. We love each & everyone of you and hope to hear from you all soon.

Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

3 Week Makeup-2 of 3

Aight, and now onto some other events...

CYCLOCROSS - CYCLOCROSS - CYCLOCROSS

Two weekends ago I got the entire family out to the first Cyclocross race of the season, Pain on the Peak. Firstly, I would like to thank Portland Velo & OBRA for putting on such an awesome event. The course was great and everything seemed to go great. I personally started the day of with some serious mechanical issues that were going to put me out of racing. Luckily for me though, cyclocross is filled with Amazing people. I had two different teams offer me a front wheel to race on. A HUGE thanks to teams Ironclad & Veloshop. I ended up riding on Brad Urban's (from the Veloshop) pit wheel. I know Brad through the ski patrol and he saved the race for me by allowing me to race on his only pit wheel. I did really good for myself at this race. I continue to learn new stuff and advance my skills every race. I got 11th, which has been my best rank in any cross race that I've done so far, & Laird did awesome getting 12th in his newly upgraded Category B race: Results.
Here are a few photos from OregonVelo. This guy is at all of the cycling events that I have raced in. He takes some awesome photos & here are some of them from the super dusty Pain on the Peak race:

From Cyclocross

Here's a shot of Brad (the guy who loaned me a front wheel for the race)

From Cyclocross

And here's Laird Novak representing Team Vista Ridge.

From Cyclocross

God damn do I ever love Cross!!! The Cross Crusade begins October 5th and I'm hoping to hit as many of the races as possible. I hope that the Cross bug hits you all this fall and I hope to see you guys out at some of the races! Here's a link to the cross web album online: Cyclocross Photos.

- Ski Patrol -

Along with the cross season starting, the snowy mountain season is also upon us. I woke up bright and early on a cloudy & raining Sunday morning yesterday to head up to the mountain for some training. We did our annual Chair Evacuation, Rope Rescue and Avalanche Transciever training up at Summit on the base of Mt. Hood. That's correct, the lowest in elevation resort at the base of the mountain is name Summit. The event went good and I got to see some friends that I haven't seen in awhile. I sadly had to let the Patrol Chief know about the fact that I won't be able to patrol as much this year. With the new addition to the family, work, going back to school, cyclocross and the other commitments that I have, the mountain time is going to have to decline a bit this season. I'll still patrol this season just not as often as I have the past few years. We have to keep our training up-to-date each year in the horrible case of a chair breaking down and us needing to evacuate everyone from it. Here's a shot of the prior weeks session of chair evac taken by my great pal, fellow patroller, fellow cyclocross racer & new parent Brian Barker:

From Blogger Pictures

That's been the past few weekends for us. I went to a Cyclocross Clinic during the week two weeks ago and that was great. I learned some great skills that I think are really going to help my cross season this year. So there's cross racing, patrolling, doctor's visits with Cyrus, a bunch of other random stuff and some random house work as well to tack onto our list of stuff. But I'll get into some more of that in the next post...

Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

3 Week Makeup-1 of 3

Alright folks. I'm terribly sorry for the massive delay in response time here. It's been just under 3 weeks since our last post and so I'm going to try and cram your inboxes & your readers with a few posts to catch ya'lls up so that it's not one incredibly long post. Here goes...

Things have been good. We've been pretty darn busy keeping up with the little ones, first and foremost. Family is always our primary objective and we've been having a blast forming this one. But going back to work, figuring out some x-mas time traveling, getting my schooling started up again, working around the house, doctor's visits, bike racing, ski patrolling, and well a few other things that we tossed into the mix have surely been keeping us occupied as well.

The little ones!!
--Well, Cyrus ain't that little anymore. This guy has gained more weight than I've seen any baby gain. He weighed in at 6lbs 6oz at birth. Than one week later, hey weighed in at 7lbs 1oz. That means that he didn't loose any baby weight, which most babies do. Then the next we had to go into the doctors again and he weighed in at 7lbs 4oz. He gained 3oz. over night. Needless to say, Cyrus is feeding well and greatly enjoying his boob time (lucky little booger). We couldn't say enough good words about little Cyrus. He's super calm, super mellow, and rather quite. He generally only fusses at night time when mamma's ready to go to bed. Lately he's been acting as a night owl. He likes to get a few good hours of sleep late in the evening and then we everyone else is ready to go to bed, BAAM!, little man is wide-eyed and checking everything out. It's been playing a little havoc on our sleep schedules, but we're getting by. He also hasn't gotten fully used to his bath's yet, hehee...

From Cyrus Jose Rodriguez

--And Arianna... She is surely growing up to be the little pistol pete that she's meant to be. We think its a mix of her age, her having a new little brother and being a Puerto Rican female. We all know just how crazy them Puerto Rican woman can be. Well, that's Arianna in a nutshell and at the energetic & ripe age of 1.5. Arianna has surely been keeping us on our toes. In fact, as I am typing this message she just pushed over her rocking chair to the counter tops and is getting into all of the stuff on the counter tops. LOL! Arianna has been rather demanding and clingy lately. But I honestly think it has more to due with her age than any sort of jealousy towards her brother. Either way, I know that she has been a handful for mamma while I am at work. Luckily indoor park is only a few block away and happens 3 days a week. Ari loves playing at indoor park and it's a good event to tire her in the mornings.

Along with KoKo, we try to get her out walking as much as possibly. Especially since the rains are about to come!

From Ari B.

Ari & Cyrus are so fashionable:

From Ari B.

From Cyrus Jose Rodriguez

From Ari B.

From Cyrus Jose Rodriguez

Aight, that's the kids. Their awesome, their each their own person and even with the frustrations we're having a blast with them. Here are a few more photos. Click on any of the photos (or the link on the side) to be directed to the web albums of photos. We've added quite a bit to all of them.

Next, onto some other events that have been taking up our time, in the next post...

Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch-

More Photos

Okay, so I just got around to uploading some more photos of Cyrus. You can find them on his album within our Picasa Web Albums.
Here's the link to the web albums:
Cyrus' Page
We've added a Family Photos page
the Entire Web Albums collection

So what do you guys think?
Do you think he bares any resemblance to his father???
hehee And check out the photos of Arianna checking out/poking her little brother. She's really excited to be a big sister. It's unfortunate that we're all sick right now. Because of that we haven't been letting Ari touch Cyrus too much.


The slide show continues to grow...






Sincerely Yours,
-The Rodriguez Bunch

Cyrus is Here!!!

It must have been some sort of fate but just an hour after the last post that I made Sue had called me at work saying that it has begun and that I need to head home soon. So that's how this week started. I went to work, got a call from Sue saying plan on it being this week because she's "got the feeling." I then made a blog post at lunch saying that Cyrus is getting closer & closer to being here, then an hour later I got another call from Sue saying that the contractions are happening often and heavier and that I need to get ready for this. Getting ready was the easy part. I finished what I was working on at the office, I got the team squared away and left my email message saying I'll be out of the office for at least a week. We called our midwives letting them know to get ready and then we called Lara. Lara watched Arianna while Sue & I were at the birth center. We could not have done this at all without the help of Lara.

--Dearest Lara, thank you so much!!--

Okay, so the birth. Cyrus gave Sue quite a struggle, especially compared to Arianna. Sue spent all evening in labor only to have her water break in the early hours of the morning. With Ari, Sue's water broke at home, we headed to the birth center, Sue went through the labor pains and then Ari was here. With Cyrus, Sue went through the labor pains for almost a day, the water broke and then that was only the half of it. After the water broke she had to go through another days worth of labor pains until Cyrus was ready to come out. Only to have Cyrus come out sunny-side up. Cyrus coming out sunny-side up was the reason for the long labor. For those that don't understand that terminology: sunny-side up just means that he was facing in the wrong direction. His head still came out first and so he wasn't breach or anything. He was just facing us when he came out rather than us seeing the back of his head which is the typical rotation of the baby. Even with that one down-side he was very alert and came to us in the water with his eyes wide open. We then got to rest with him at the birthing center for the full next day. He's super alert and seems to be such a happy & calm baby. hehehe but don't they all at the stage. His info:

Cyrus Jose Rodriguez
Born Wednesday, 08/27/2008 @ 1:45a.m.
6lbs. 6oz.
21" long
Virgo
and looks a lot like his daddy, especially with his long toes & big feet

And as an additional side note; Cyrus is the first grandson of his generation of grand-kids & great grand-kids on the Rodriguez side of the family. I too was the first grandson for my generation. As for the Dougherty side, Cyrus is just one amongst many boys in the line of grand & great-grand kids.

Okay, well I think that about wraps up the birth story. We're all at home now and working at getting some rest. Sue is very happy to not be pregnant anymore and we're all so excited to finally get to hang out with this wonderful little boy. A few friends have stopped by to check out the little man and to help us out. It's been great since we have ourselves completely tied up with a 1.5 year old and a preemie new born. It's always nice to have family & friends stop by just so that we can either run errands or take a bath or cook food or just sit and rest. To all of our family & friends in the area, please feel free to give us a buzz, see what's going on and then stop on by to hang with the family.

Here's the online Photo album dedicated to the great shots that we're taking of the little guy:
(just click on the photo to be directed to the photo album)

Cyrus Jose Rodriguez

And a little slide show for ya'lls:





Sincerely Yours, with the newest addition of Cyrus,
The Rodriguez Bunch

We're Almost There!

We are ssssoooooo close right now. Sue's cramps & contractions have NOT subsided today. Lately they've been occurring at night time, but have gone away during the day. However, they're not going away today. So I think we're within a few days/hours now.

Our weekend- Not much going on. We cleaned up around the house quite a bit, which was nice. Sue banked in about 150.00 bucks worth of books. We took in the BOXES & BOXES of books that Sue's read and now she has an almost endless account to be able to trade books for a long time. While cleaning I took the drum sets over to Brandon's house, where Jon's staying. That's right ladies & gentleman, Jon (a.k.a. Theo Decks, Convex Pontifex, hELLEBORE) is BACK in Portland. He's been on a musical adventure in Minneapolis and we're so stoked to have him back here in Portland. Keep glued for show updates and what nots.
So I've cleaned out the boxes of books, the double drum sets and some other musical equipment. Now all I got to do is make another Goodwill run of the remaining junk and soon enough you might be able to see from wall to wall of our garage. Whoohhooo.

Aight, well I'm gonna finish up my little lunchtime posting here. Because I'm gonna try to get as much $h!t done here at work before Sue's water breaks. BAAM!!! Who knows, maybe next post will be of little Cyrus Jose Rodriguez.

Happy 76th GREAT Grandma Lois!!

Grandma,
You're a wonderful person. You've lead such a great life and raised some amazing family which has allowed me the opportunity to extend the family tree with these two bundles of joy. We couldn't thank you enough. There are no words that could explain how truly grateful we all are to have you in our lives. You are such a happy spirited person and we're glad to have been blessed with that same happy spirit in our lives. We can't wait to see you soon enough Grandma. We're gonna have this baby boy and the Rodriguez Bunch is going on vacation to come and see you!!!

Grandma I tried to compress this video enough to email it to you but my attempts failed. I will now post it on here for the world to see.



Luv ya tons Grandma,
-The Rodriguez Bunch

The Heat, Hornings, the Heat, the Air Show & IT'S HOT!

Here we go again. I'd like to continue where I left off on the last post by the pictures from LoveFest 2008 (Sean & Sarah's Wedding @ Horning's Hideout) & from the International Air Show out in Hillsborro. But before we get to all of that...

I was riding home today in this super HOT heat that we're feeling right now and the first thing I did when I got home was take off my gear and head to the bedroom to change clothes. Also, our bedroom is the only room in the house with a window fan and so that's usually the coolest spot in the house. However, here's what I came into as I entered the room:

Not sure if you can read those numbers or not but the clock says 6:45 and the thermometer on the fan is reading 97.

Then just one minute later...

And we're at 99 DEGREES! That's right folks, we're gettin' hotter & hotter by the minute out here in Portland.

And now on to what you've all been waiting for. LOVEFEST 2008!!! I can't say enough good things about LoveFest. Sean & Sarah were absolutely gorgeous, they brought in such an awesome gathering of family & friends. For the most part the weather held out for us (we did get hit with some rain on Friday night & randomly throughout Saturday - but hey, we live in Oregon & that's only to be expected. Even in August), the ceremony was harmonious, Saturday was jammed packed with wonderful festivities to keep everyone busy, we blew the roof off of an outdoor event on Saturday night, the band rocked it on Friday night, the food was deliciously endless throughout the weekend, and well, we just had a blast. Sue was able to put on a smile while she had to grin n' bear it because she's 8.5 months pregnant. Sleeping on the air mattress surely was tough for her. There were only 3 downsides to the whole weekend-long festival. 1.) the rain on Friday wreaked havoc on Sean & Sarah's guest book, 2.) Sue wasn't able to lounge all that much or get any "quality" sleep because of little Cyrus inside of her & 3.) one of the highlights of the weekend was the frolfing, a.k.a. Disc Golf, games going on & I didn't partake. I was so amped on the days prior to the LoveFest Frolfing Games but I ended up taking a 2 hour long nap with Sue & Ari on Saturday, and it was raining for other parts of the day (not that that would hold me back from Frolfin). So I didn't end up frolfin with the rest of them, but that's okay. The sleep we got was MUCH NEEDED and irreplaceable. Everything else came together so well for Sean & Sarah's wedding. That pretty much wraps up LoveFest from my end. Sean & Sarah we couldn't thank you enough for being so beautiful, having such wonderful family & friends, and being such out-going & happy-spirited people. We hope that you two got to enjoy it as much as the rest of us did!
Below are a few that wrap up the weekend and you can got to the LoveFest 2008 album of photos that we posted. -I was trying some night time settings on our camera and so we didn't get the best shots of all of the partying.

... And thenthe AIR SHOW. The best part about the Air Show was that Sue & Ari had a good time. Once again, as good as could be expected for carrying around that baby boy that seems to just be nesting away in there. But this was each of theirs first Air Show and Hillsboro threw a pretty darn good show. I was hoping to see a B1 or some sort big C1 or C17 cargo plane that we could walk through. They didn't have any of them but they did have "Rides in Monster Trucks!" That looked like a fun little cookie-spinning session in a monster truck. Ari was a little bit crabby from not napping, but was super into checking all the planes out. She's been absolutely fascinated with planes the past few months. All day long she was "Oooo'ing & Aahhh'ing" & pointing up in the sky as all the planes flew by. There was great aeronautical maneuvering by both foreign and American planes alike (there was a great father and son team flying Russian Yaks) . They had a Red Bull plane that after his show, as he taxied in front of the crowd, they blew off this enormous rocketing set of flames that startled us all. It was a like a huge bomb right behind the plane on the other side of the run way. But the flames were big enough that we could feel the heat from out seat.
The Rodriguez Bunch had a blast at the Air Show. We're certain that little man Cyrus will enjoy the future air shows that we venture to.

So, that about wrapped up our weekend. I hope you all enjoyed the experience as we, The Rodriguez Bunch, did! You can also check out other photos from the weekend in our Photo Albums.

LoveFest 2008

Hillsborro International Air Show 2008

- The Rodriguez Bunch is signing out.